I have an hp dv4 laptop running Ubuntu 10.10. While booting up, the laptop fan just runs excessively for a few seconds until the login screen appears. Then it functions normally for the rest of the session.
I've read somewhere that you can do some tweaking in boot options. When I checked it out it was given laptop fan always ON : Enabled so I disabled it. Now, while running the system the fan alternatively picks up speed and then slows down.
The laptop is not hot at all and the temperature is a bit cold here. Any help will be appreciated :)
This is normal functioning for a laptop. Remember that the external temperature of the laptop is not necessarily a guide as to the temperature of the CPU, and naturally manufacturers are cautious when it comes to keeping the hardware cooled!
If you're using proprietary drivers for your graphics card, this may have something to do with it. When I was running windows, and now on Ubuntu, I had a similar behaviour. On boot, you could clearly hear the fan spinning like mad, it would slow down only when the drivers were loaded.
I think that the card firmware is playing it safe and spinning the fan at some "standard" speed until drivers kick in and read the temperature, and adjust the fan speed to a sane level.
But you might have a completely different issue... >_>